Wild Man Creek (Virgin River #14)(82)

“I may never walk again,” Jillian said with a deep moan. She was not an expert taster and had overeaten.

“When we get home, I’m going to get all my stuff together and loaded into the car. I’m heading back to the city early. I want to get my driving done by afternoon.”

“I understand. But it was such a good week. I’m fifteen pounds heavier, but really…” She sighed deeply. “I’ll help you get packed up tonight. Moving around will be good for me.”

They folded Kelly’s clothes together in her bedroom. “Tell me how you met this guy you’ve been seeing,” Jillian asked.

Kelly didn’t have to think. “It was a charity event, a huge thousand-dollar-a-plate event that was held at my restaurant and our chef de cuisine, Durant, was a participant. Luca is not only well-known in the area, but also part owner of the restaurant and he was one of the star chefs. I had already met him, but we became better acquainted, started talking food and menus and voilà—friends. That was almost six months ago and we’ve been in touch since—sometimes we cook together.”

“Chefs,” Jillian said. “Weird. I don’t get together with gardeners and talk vegetables….”

“Yet,” Kelly said with a laugh.

There was a chiming sound from down the hall. It was Jillian’s cell phone. She looked at her watch—it was after nine. “I wonder who’d be calling me.”

She ran down the hall and grabbed up her phone. “Colin?” she said. “Have you learned the iPhone?”

“I have things to tell you!”

“I can barely hear you! Wait, just stand by a minute. Let me see if I can get better reception.” She ran out of her room and up the stairs to the widow’s walk. Getting out the trapdoor created a racket, but she emerged into the star-filled night. “Can you hear me?” she asked him.

“I know where you are,” he said with a laugh. “You’re on the roof.”

“Oh, that’s so much better. Where are you?”

“In my car, headed back to Virgin River.”

“Already? At night?”

“I never went farther than Sedona, Jilly,” he said. “I went to Shiloh Tahoma’s gallery. He calls it a shop or a store, but his oils and prints are on display in the front and it’s every bit a gallery—they’re awesome. Of course, he’s been serious for a long time, since he was just a kid. First thing he said to me was, ‘Let’s go slap some paint around.’ I thought it was a test of some kind, but I think he really wanted to paint for a while. Then he looked at three of my paintings and said, ‘Nice.’ Then he took me to his house and I had dinner with his family—a wife and three daughters. It was just a simple house, but the art in it was unbelievable—the man is a master. And he collects masters. I wish you could have seen it all.”

“When was this? Today?” she asked him.

“Yesterday. Last night. He offered me a bed for the night but I just didn’t want to impose any more than I had. So he told me to come back first thing in the morning and I was at his shop at eight. He had a lot of questions for me—like what did I know about lithographs and prints, that sort of thing. Stuff I remember from art in school and stuff I read about over the years, but barely understood and haven’t worked at. He suggested that when I have more work and can offer prints, he had a guy who could set up a website for me, if I felt like doing that. He sells numbered prints on his site, but never sells his originals that way. To make a long story short, he told me I should talk to dealers, maybe agents, look at some other shops, but he offered to hang my work. And get this, Jilly—I asked him if I was good enough for my work to hang in his gallery and he said, ‘Not quite. But in five or ten years you’re going to be outstanding.’ He said he thought my work would sell, though, and there was an advantage in being first, and he knew it was nothing but luck, me having run into his cousin in Virgin River.”

“And what then? What did you do?”

“I left him all my work and signed a simple three-paragraph contract that said he’d give the work six months and take fifty percent. He said if I checked around I would learn that fifty percent is high, but that I am also unknown and he has bills to pay. He’s so practical, so logical. And he asked me—if I did any painting in Africa, would I send him photos. Then we had lunch, shook hands and I started driving. I’ve been driving for eight hours and I’m still so wired I wonder if I’ll ever sleep. I’ve been driving, doing reruns of this in my head for eight hours, wondering what happened.”

“Colin, are you sure he’ll be fair with your work? What if there’s no money? Or what if he doesn’t give it back?”

“If that happens, Jilly, it will be the most remarkable lesson of my life, and the lesson will be that I don’t know anything about a man who strikes me as the most down-to-earth, honest, ethical man I’ve ever met. It would mean I know nothing about human beings and better never trust another one again.”

“Oh, Colin, you sound so excited!”

“He said it would take him a few days to hang the work—it has to be just right. But he said he’d email me a picture of the shop so I could see where he put them.” He laughed. “Then he showed me how to take pictures with the phone and email them or text them from the phone. The only joke he made—he said it was hard to believe I flew a complicated helicopter in combat and couldn’t use an iPhone.”